4 August ’05, Thursday The Blue Virgin Window “The Church of Our Lady”, Cathedral of Notre Dame, Chartres, France. It has been a long time since I’ve gone to a class lecture, but that is just about what Louise and I did this afternoon. We had heard about a guide at the cathedral in Chartres, a man named Malcolm Miller. He is supposed to be able to give you the tour that was really worthwhile, although it could be a little costly compared to others that we have attended. It seems that Malcolm Miller has been around this cathedral for a few years (since 1958 from Great Britain) and also has had some “in-depth” studies on the histories of the church and the Christian religion. Our tour cost us $10 Euro each for the hour, and I must admit, I would have paid more. It would do an injustice to Mr. Miller and the Cathedral if I were to go into detail on our web-page, so I won’t, except to tell you that the first church was built on this site some time prior to 743, as at that time, they were “rebuilding” the church after it was destroyed by Hunald, Duke of Aquitaine…are you following me??? Really, Mr. Miller was superb in his direction as we toured the cathedral for the hour. One big negative, it went way too quick. Also, we aren’t into purchasing much for ourselves on this “journey”, but we made an exception in this case…we bought a book that Mr. Miller wrote on the Cathedral. The church is best known for its 13th century stained glass windows that depict various bible stories of the old and new testament. Since in medieval times, there weren’t many written words, thus the windows were used to tell the stories of the bible. Pilgrims come from all over the world each year to view a piece of cloak, that was given to the cathedral by Charles the Bald and it is thought to have been worn by Mary when she gave birth to Christ. This cathedral is reported to be the 3rd largest cathedral in the world behind St Peters in Rome and the Salisbury Cathedral in England. Now we’ve seen 2 and 3 and we look forward to seeing number 1 soon in Rome. We had just about run out of time to get lunch before they close for the afternoon, so we ran across the street to a street side café. ST. Joel had French onion soup and Louise had a great blue cheese salad and a carafe of wine. We kind of like the French café’s. Our walk into and back from town took us along the bank of the river with having to cross it twice on a couple of unique bridges. Just prior to getting to the campground, I spotted another café with a patio right on the edge of the river. This gave me an excuse to have a café espresso and a small treat. Tomorrow…Northwest to Caen and the beaches of Normandy